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Google Lauded for Accessible Search
With the recent release of a modified version of their search engine, Google is receiving praise from many different groups. The new Google Accessible Search was released as a Google labs project which prioritize pages based on their likelihood of being accessible to visually impaired users after the original search results are returned. From the article: "The best-known guidelines for building an accessible site are the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) from W3C. But these are not the basis of Google's new service. Raman said: 'We don't test against WCAG. We think in the spirit of those guidelines, but we don't test against them verbatim.' Instead he endeavored to identify 'what works for the end-user,' describing a process of 'experimentation, training and machine learning.'"
A Microsoft source revealed that MSN will have "Accessible Search Personal Experience Edition(TM)" available next winter. ASPEE will require customers to buy "Microsoft Genuine Advantage Neural Control Implant(TM)". According to Microsoft the use of a neural implant will be advantageous to customers, because they will be automatically "shut-down" if caught using a non-genuine version os "Windows for Brains", what would help them to be law-abiding citizens.
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The more accessibility is known, the less we'll have websites made in Flash (or Flash navigation menus, Flash content, etc).
Flash webmasters: If you can't handle the real Web, you might as well put PDFs online instead of a real website. The Web is not TV, the Web is not a bitmap graphic, the Web is not a newspaper. You can't assume anything about the reader (text, speech, screen size (if any), download speed, etc). Or at least stop calling your Flash files "websites". Thanks.
http://www.google.com/u/accessible?cx=accessible!& q=porn&btnG=Search
:)
Nuff said
They're also not following W3C standards for accessibility. Google can currently do no wrong, even when they do exactly what others would be blasted for as being wrong.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
It is my understanding that part of the "Accessible" algorithm that ranks pages is how well the website follows W3C compliant code (HTML, XHTML, and so forth). If that is so, that's great. It may force people to not only consider good keywords and descriptions as far as SEO goes, but to also make their code more standards-compliant.
Blogger has audio CAPTCHAs now. Check out my blog for an example.
And they're doing it for accounts too: Check it out.
So yes, now they're doing audio CAPTCHAs.
I don't think that's exactly true. Notice that they do NOT rank themselves highly on their own accessible search. They aren't cheating here. They do have some problems, but every indication is that they'll be fixing them, not obfuscating like the competition would do.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
For what's supposed to be an "accessible" search engine page, Google have made pitiful efforts to even bother validating the XHTML (yes it has DOCTYPE of XHTML 1.0 Transitional). Check out the W3C's validation of it - 8 errors, including some outrageous typos like "bgtcolor" instead of "bgcolor" and no closing slashes (required for XHTML) in their <br> tags. I find it amazing that Google would tout such an search engine on its accessibility merits when it doesn't even validate due to blatant errors that are easily fixable.
Google, Yahoo and Microsoft were acused by Amnesty international were accused to "beeing evil".
a couple of days later google releases an accessible search which seems to be rushed out badly (their code doesn't validate to basic HTML standards, let alon WAI and other compatibilities which would really help disabled people).
just a coincidence ? I think not.
They have managed to avoid bad press in the tech world.